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THE AGE OF CONCENTRATION: 

AN ADDRESS 
Delivered at Convocation, Fall Term 



Simpson College, 

INDIANOLA, IOWA, 

Wednesday, September II, 1907, 

BY 

GEORGE F. PARKER, 

{Secretary to the Equitable Trusi££S. :^. lately ___^ 

United States Consul in Birmingham ; etc. ) 




Printed for Private Circulation, 

1907. 



THE AGE OF CONCENTRATION 



AN ADDRESS 



Delivered at Convocation, Fall Term 



Simpson College, 



INDIANOLA, IOWA, 



Wednesday, September II, 1907, 



GEORGE F: PARKER, 

{Secretary to the Equitable Trustees ; lately 
United States Consul in Birmingham ; etc.) 





Printed for Private Circulation, 

1907. 



\ 






6 

Cory 



<5 o 3 %• f \^ 



Q 



THE AGE OF CONCENTRATION. 

I. 

"An old custom existed in Babylon of carrying 
the sick into the public square and there exposing them 
to the gaze of passers-by. The latter drew near, asked 
the symptoms, the means used to decrease the malady. 
If they have had or still have anyone amongst ail their 
relations suffering from the same ailment, they describe 
the remedies that have cured them." — JMaspero's 
''Egypt and Assyria.'" 



The American people, whose ancestors and forerunners 
fondly believed that their institutions were immune to the 
diseases which had killed off their predecessors upon the 
Iiuman scene, are now following this^grim custom of half a 
hundred centuries ago. They may be seen carrying their 
afflicted into the market-places of nations and of history, 
in the fond hope of obtaining a diagnosis of ills and sug- 
gestions of remedy. We no longer live in Utopia or 
Arcadia, while the Ship, Human Perfection, once thought 
to be mirrored on the mirages of the Future, has not, 
even yet, found anchorage in our harbors. Questions are 
raised, doubts are hinted, maladies have developed, while 
remedies, more numerous than those known to the 
Babylonians, are proposed. ^ 



I shall venture to deal with the question, — old when 
the most ancient of civilizations was new — viz : the con- 
centration into few hands, groups, or systems, of the power 
inherent in numbers. This is the more necessary because 
since the later years of the Fifteenth Century, the centri- 
fugal forces of society have left largely to individuals, 
churches, parties, governments, large or small, and local 
bodies, whether official or voluntary, the conduct of their 
own affairs. 

Among the contributing elements have been the 
changes in religion, including the rise of the laj'^men and 
the diminution of ecclesiastical power ; general acceptance 
of the Christian doctrine on industry ; the softening of the 
feudal discipline, once wholesome and necessary ; the 
tendency to equality in war, promoted by the evolution of 
explosives and firearms ; the diffusion of the taxing power 
among diverse authorities ; and the rewards of individual 
or associated effort and adventure made possible by the 
discovery of new regions, as well as by development of old 
ones. To these must be added that enforced seclusion — 
almost monastic in its completeness — which, in the process 
of settlement, has been the lot of the pioneer. 

II. 

When Europe had been conquered to Western Civil- 
ization, the flow of i)opulation into new lands was 
accompanied by an aroused sense of responsibility which 
made it no longer a light matter either to develop old 
communities or to found new ones. Limiting the inquiry 
to our country, few of the present day, when the mechanical 
tends to dominate the intellectual or disputes mastery with 
it, realize the independence, the confidence, or the struggle 
incident to settlement and conquest. So much emphasis 
has been laid upon the intolerance and narrowness, early 



transplanted, that the Later development, which better 
illustrates the triumph of originality and leadership, and 
has assured the dominance, over a long period, of the dis- 
tributive influences, is overlooked or its importance 
minified. 

Starting at two widely sundered points on the Atlantic 
Coast — neither attractive in itself — a strong, adventurous 
population slowly made its way, step by step, homestead 
by homestead, township by township, county by county, 
State by State. It was as restless and as regular as the tides. 
Now under one jurisdiction, then another, it carried always 
the customs, manners, industry, religion, traditions and laws 
of a conquering race. From the beginning, it was essen- 
tially English and has so remained. Continually outside 
the limits of any authority effective to help or to hinder, it 
provided for the Church and the school, for social and civic 
order. It was never out of a state of war — war of extermin- 
ation waged with a race ; war wth nature in her most unre- 
lenting moods ; war with political systems in which the 
small abuses were very real to the imagination ; and econ- 
omic war from which, in a progressive society, there can be 
no escape. 

Overcoming these unfriendly conditions, comfort and 
wealth followed effort, toleration succeeded bigotry^ oppor- 
tunity was wrested from weakening assertions of equality, 
and power came in spite of pretension. In like manner, 
ability and character, overcoming their enemy, mediocrity, 
brought recognition to real leadership. When each man 
knew or found his place he must keep or better it. If he 
failed, he must take the consequences. " He that will not 
work neither shall he eat " was the law, rigorously 
enforced, so far as possible among a people, ready to 
respond to a cry of real need. It was not deemed 
necessary, however, to go out into the highways and by- 



ways in order to compel the idle or the useless to come in 
and be tucked away into refuges or schools. The idea 
that they could be made useful to humanity without 
ambition or effort of their own had not then become 
tenable. 

III. 

Character developed individuality in industry. An 
almost infinite variety of skill was evoked from demand or 
ripened with opportunity. The prairie, forest, stream, 
lake and mine, all yielded their natural fruits. There was 
absent that specialization, now so dominant as an econ- 
omic force, and ever present the helpfulness which makes 
that life the most perfect experiment in co-operation ever 
tried. 

Diverse in origin and character, the resulting society 
was so delicately adjusted that each laborer, farmer, 
carpenter, wheelwright, miller, smith, teacher, clergyman, 
physician, lawyer, or even moneylender, found his place. 
If there was scarcity in some product, the ingenuity of 
many filled the gap. If too many were engaged in an 
occupation, some one moved on. There was no place for 
what is now known in the scheme of life as unemployment 
and if this term had been known, it would have applied 
only to the defective and the lazy, the vagrant and the 
criminal. 

Thus, from the beginning, each neighborhood 
developed, first, the skilled callings necessary to insure 
independence, then, those related to special or favored 
resources. Whether in metals, textiles, machinery, fisher- 
ies, products of the forest or mine, foreign shipping, 
internal transportation by vehicle or by vessel from coast 
port to port, or through navigable rivers, the development 
was slow, local in inception and management — an example 



of community enterprise. But, as the work was carried on 
under strong individual direction, the leader was always in 
evidence. * 

In industry, as in the parallel social and political life, 
associated effort was as universal as it was necessary. 
That a venture was small in nowise changed its character. 
If an industry did not fit into the surrounding conditions, 
the laws of competition forced it to move on into a more 
friendly environment and put something else into its place, 
as from the earliest days of history. No appeal could be 
made for artificial aid : there was no almoner. Besides, 
the sense of fairness and the quality of self-reliance were 
too strong to suggest this at a time when manual skill and 
gradual growth were the most striking qualities ; so it 
was left for the succeeding age of machinery. 

When it was necessary to link up townships, 
counties and States, the same forces came into play. If a 
canal was to be dug, the labor and capital of many 
individuals, the credit of a succession of local bodies, and 
the influence of many leaders, were necessary before it 
could be undertaken. In this way, too, our railroads were 
begun and then extended, mile by mile, over the prairies 
and through forest, swamp and wilderness. If these facil- 
ities were to be procured, the people interested must take 
the initiative. All rights and franchises were conferred by 
the States, under the operation of principles and laws older 
than our government. Aid was voted in counties and 
townships, while donations of land or money came as free 
gifts from individuals or municipalities. Thus light and 
knowledge were admitted against the time when the 
central government needed help. They did not invite or 
permit Federal interference, seek to hamper development, 
or fashion manacles for the owners of capital or the repre- 
sentatives of great interests. This strange tendency did 



8 

not show itself until we came into a time when it is 
difficult to decide whether socialists, agitators or dema- 
gogues, in or out of office, are the most numerous or the 
most dangerous to societ^^ 

TV. 

When it was desired to found an academy or college, 
the people of a district or State, generally those who held 
in common some form of faith, came together, gave what 
money they could, pledged their credit, furnished land or 
building materials or provided teachers, and lo ! the work 
was done. It would now seem a small, to some perhaps, 
even a pitiful result. 

The instruction was simple but wholesome, with a 
religious basis, and was imparted with a spirit worthy of 
both envy and emulation. It brought together earnest 
young men and women who, devoted to study for the sake 
of knowledge, went out into the world to meet bravely the 
demands upon them. It was not education only that they 
obtained : they passed on the torch of learning. In 
these days of exaggerated or sham athletics, and in 
requital for their services, we may, perhaps, overlook their 
failure to revive the glories of the Stadium or the brutal- 
ities of the Amphitheatre. 

If we could look upon the architecture of the colleges 
and libraries of that time, and question their builders, 
we might extort Touchstone's confession : " An ill-favored 
thing, sir, but mine own." They were really interested in 
the men and women who were to be developed in the one, 
or to read the few books housed in the other. We do not 
know even their names but there was scarcely a com- 
munity so small or remote, that it did not contain some 
man who laid the foundations of what we now enjoy or 
anticipate. If we are not heedless and unjust, we shall 
not forget the first step that both cost and counted. 



9 

Men, thus surrounded, strained every nerve, not to 
satiate the miser's greed, not to gratify any desire for vain 
show, but to promote the pubUc good. That they were 
compelled to stand together in their own defence created a 
responsibility from which there was no escape. There was 
no hope of help from the outside, no central authority 
whose assistance might be invoked. If the aid of remoter 
neighbors was sought when weakness, or defence, or mis- 
fortune, made assistance necessary, an obligation was 
created which must be met. If the law needed assistance 
in order to catch a thief it must have it, not to arouse 
violence or encourage mob rule, but that an enemy of 
society might be punished. 



It was inevitable that such a people — in their suc- 
cessive generations — should develop and perfect local 
government. Every community, from the Alleghenies 
westward, began life under the protecting aegis of the Fed- 
eral Government, but the powers conferred were so purely 
permissive, that they were little more than licenses issued 
to adventurous men to exercise authority for themselves. 

These simple laws were transmitted from one township, 
county or State, to others to the Westward. Some small 
variation from a general type might occasionally be seen, 
some apparant novelty which, like the strange word that 
has survived — was certain to prove itself a revival of some 
old-time law, fallen into disuse. In general, the story of 
this silent progress was the old, old one which tells how 
habits, manners or customs have so found acceptance and 
challenged obedience as to earn the name, common law, so 
characteristic of a race. 

Order, progress and protection to life and property 
demanded that there should be a courthouse and a jail. 



10 

Provision of a place for Divine worship, rude but free, and 
open to all creeds ; employment of a teacher, perhaps him- 
self little instructed ; a bridge to be built even before 
county or township could be organized ; the neighborhood 
road to connect with another leading on to the improvised 
market-place ; association in interest of neighbor with 
neighbor, of community with community ; — all these, fol- 
lowing as the night the day, there appeared that new-old 
wonder : a State. It had not been made by social or politi- 
cal convulsion ; it was rather a new island, slowly and 
painfully pushed up by the restless industry of humanity. 

VI. 

I have thus passed in review the lives of our ances- 
tors and predecessors upon this large scene. It is not a 
fancy picture of an isolated community — a mythical 
gathering of prehistoric peoples. It is a plain story of 
beginnings, of growth and of real success, and the more 
deeply we study the times and conditions, the more clearly 
may we see that it is a people who make institutions : that 
institutions do not make or even seriously modify men. It 
is a record of high ideals some of which have justified 
themselves by success, more have failed, while others are 
subject to perils neither suspected nor foreseen by the 
founders. 

It is the story of an infinite congeries of communities. 
In these days of universal Imperialism — the strange new 
word now admitted into the lexicon of democracy — they 
would no doubt be characterized as parochial. It has 
become the fashion to speak in depreciation of the parish, 
to belittle or ridicule this nursery of a race, to condemn it 
as narrow, rural or provincial. It is forgotten that every 
man, however great, is born in some parish ; that he finds 
his early training in a parish which, however large, is still 



11 

a parish ; that he must live under the scrutin}^ and subject 
himself to discipline from the rules and conventions of a 
parish. Most of his duties relate to a parish, where, 
whether he embraces or flouts opportunity, he works, 
marries, makes friends or enemies for himself, pays taxes, 
claims reward for good deeds, suffers for offense or crime, 
and asserts his right to protection or recognition. When 
he dies, even though he be the master poet of the world, 
his body may find burial in a parish cemetery, in a remote 
hamlet, while in that great Abbey in the Parish of West- 
minster, the center of the world's proudest capital, the 
pride and the devotion of a race ma}' raise to him a fitting 
memorial. 

VII. 

But other times, other manners. Individual and local 
development, as opposed to concentration, could not con- 
tinue forever ; of these contending forces, one now has 
sway, now the other. The pendulum swings as it has done 
throughout all history, and, in our case, the possibility, 
even the necessity, for concentration lay concealed in our 
society. If there was a Reformation, it brought a counter 
movement ; political revolution, so-called, was followed 
inevitably by reaction ; when individual development in 
industry had gone to a certain point, it must give way to 
the opposite tendency, made possible by machinery, itself a 
necessity for meeting the demands of men ; if governments 
were multiplied and powers distributed, it was inevitable 
that consolidation should again follow and that by con- 
quest, annexation, partition of the weak among the strong, 
absorption, and the operation of centralizing forces, one 
government should swallow up another. These processes 
involved the loss or surrender of power in one place and its 
strengthening somewhere else. 



12 

This movement proceeded with varying fortunes until 
about the middle of the last century. It may be said fairly 
to have reached its culmination with the continental 
revolutionary fiascos of 1848; the collapse of the Chartist 
movement in England, conjoined, as it was, with the 
deceptive success of the so-called Free Trade Idea ; and the 
foredoomed defeat of disruption in the United States. In a 
few years — less than the lifetime of a generation — revolu- 
tionary or republican movements in Hungary, Italy and 
Spain had come to grief; centralization of the Napoleonic 
type had established itself, regardless of name, in France ; 
Germany had reverted, to all intents, to the medieval 
theory of Divine Right ; Ireland was tied to England more 
firmly than ever ; Japan had come into the world as an 
autocracy of the true western type ; the Balkan countries, 
hitherto the seat of small anarchies, had become nominally 
independent, but, in reality, had followed the example of 
Greece by falling under the suzerain povver of Russia ; 
Africa had been cut up into allotments and divided 
between the combined and consenting European powers, a 
fate with which China was threatened. Everywhere, con- 
centration of areas, accretions to authority, and hardening 
of lines, were in evidence. The louder the demand for 
popular government and institutions, the more power was 
placed in the hands of rulers, all along the line. Whether 
with monarchs, either absolute or democratic, or Presidents, 
in republics of every class, the tendency to consolidation 
was neither lost sight of nor checked. 

VIII. 

In no country has this tendency been more marked 
than in our own. The work incident to settlement, the 
struggles with nature and man, the addition to our popula- 
tion of millions with no conception of our original ideals — 



13 

and final recognition that, after all, many of these ideals 
were only fancies — all were factors. 

Our strong trend towards local initiative had come out 
of the conditions surrounding early settlement and from 
the tendencies of the time. One after another, colonies had 
been set up, which, bound only by the loosest ties, to a 
distant mother-land, became practically independent of out- 
side control or of each other. As they expanded, their 
people, singularly homogeneous in origin and purpose, 
adapted themselves to their enviroment. Customs and 
manners deemed distinctive, had less of differentiation 
than they fondly thought, or than history assumes. 

Whatever they had of authority was local. They 
knew little of a central power more than .three thousand 
miles away and cared less. They seldom saw its agents, 
it never protected or sought to protect them from savage 
incursions, and practically exercised no authority other 
than that of taxation which, as we now know from sad 
experience, was mildness itself. Nor did these colonies 
know or care much more for their neighbors. Distances 
were long, commerce was rude, and travel was difficult, so 
that each community was practically an independent 
entity. Neither were the widely sundered settlements of 
each colony much interested in each other. If a band of 
Indians swept down upon one, the other was too far away 
to render assistance in such irregular or predatory warfare. 
So, in self-defense, they protected themselves from savage 
foes, set up their own crude courts and police for punishing 
home offenders, going their own way with contentment and 
happiness. 

They were awakened from their dreams by a success- 
ful war with a great power, and that the Mother Country. 
They entered upon it, not with eagerness and enthusiasm, 
as we have been taught to believe, but with hesitation and 



14 

sorrow. They bad no conception of personal discipline 
and less of intention of conferring authorit}' upon anybody 
anywhere. Every man wanted to be his own captain, as 
well as to fill any other place in the raw frontier armies 
collected. It was only by the patience and devotion of the 
best disciplined soldier who ever commanded an army 
through a long war, that order finally came out of infinite 
chaos. 

When the contest was over and the Confederation rope 
of sand gave way to the chain of "a more perfect union" 
under the Constitution, it became at once necessary to 
replace or strengthen the weak links. Although concentra- 
tion had been skillfully concealed it was left organized. 
The powers conferred upon the executive, the legislature, 
and the judiciary, were so evenly balanced that each was 
fated to have its turn as a dominant element in the result- 
ing centralization. The struggle between them was never 
violent or even open, but, whatever happened, authority 
acquired new strength. Power, hitherto absent, quiescent 
or local, was lodged in a new body or real vitality given to 
an old one. Henceforth, when it seemed necessary to do 
something, whether customary or unusual, whether nomin- 
ated in the bond or not, a way was somehow found for 
doing it. 

During the progress of their deliberations and while it 
was under discussion, the makers of the Constitution were 
in a constant state of fear lest the people of the thirteen 
colonies, still jealous and distrustful, should, in some way, 
discover that real power had been lodged somewhere. 
They had devised the most nicely-balanced set of equations 
open to human ingenuity. But force was there and the 
first man to find this out, and, while vowing he would 
ne'er consent, consented to use it, was Thomas Jefferson. 
Taking all the conditions into account, the purchase of 



15 

Louisiana was, perhaps, the boldest and most far-reaching 
single act of Imperialism ever exercised by an executive, 
whether despotic or popular. Apology has been made for 
it during more than a hundred years, but apology, excuse 
and fine spun argument have never succeeded in giving it 
any other than its true character : an assertion of pure 
power. It was personal, concealed until completed, sup- 
ported by public sentiment at home, accepted by foreign 
countries, and has justified itself as both right and neces- 
sary. 

And yet, in the irony of fate, the man who had the 
courage to exercise this authority — autocratic in itself and 
centralizing in effect — has been accounted the founder of 
the party which has always vaunted itself as popular I It 
is no less curious and instructive that, of the four really 
great and commanding executive acts in our history — the 
purchase of Louisiana, the crushing of Nullification, the 
Emancipation of the Slaves, and the despatch of Federal 
troops to Chicago in 1894 — three were performed by men 
professing allegiance to the same party. 

IX. 

While the authority conferred upon the President of 
the United States by the Constitution, has been steadily 
enlarged by use, as well as by law and interpretation, it 
has also been the beneficiary of many incidental powers 
once absent or unforeseen. Cabinet officers, intended to be 
independent entities, have long been little more than chief 
clerks. It was always contended that the changes in the 
method of appointment to minor offices would weaken the 
authority of the President, when, in fact, they have 
strengthened him. He has been freed from the debasing 
influences which accompany favoritism and yet has 
retained, unchecked, the power of removal. 



16 

In addition, the President has had conferred upon him 
the powers incident to the extension of his duties. Of 
these, two may be cited. Under the Interstate Commerce 
Law and its amendments he may and does assert a con- 
trol of transportation by land more drastic even than that 
always exercised in Federal waters. He has special license 
to fix the standard of purit}^ for food carried in inter- 
state commerce and offered for domestic sale, or he can 
interfere with foreign trade more effectually than any 
monarch or cabinet in the world. So great is his personal 
authority that, if he chose, he might condemn the decision 
of a court by an interview or a letter, indict by a hint, 
prosecute by an order, or imprison by a beck and a nod. 

Nor is his new power limited to the execution of laws 
alread}^ enacted. At the insistent demand of one President, 
Congress repealed a vicious coinage law and that, too, with- 
out the support of a strong, much less a compelling, public 
sentiment. Another forced the enactment of a law — then 
deemed unnecessary and now known to be hurtful — for the 
regulation of railway rates and that, too, despite confessed 
ignorance of the immediate industrial effect. For another 
President, the Congress first disregarded and then over- 
threvv the safeguards placed around the expenditures of 
public money after a struggle of nearly five hundred years, 
and put into his hands, without a single restriction, or even 
the slightest accounting, a war fund of fifty millions of 
dollars. A great canal, of commanding importance to the 
world's commerce, is now under construction, a thousand 
miles from our mainland, under practicallv the same con- 
ditions. The proved effect is that, at the word of command 
from a President, the Congress stands at " attention " ready 
to obey his orders by making additions to existing laws, 
common and statute. It does this whether they are good 
or bad, necessar}' or superfluous, dictated b}^ honest 



1 



17 

methods or merely an anticipation of demands supposed to 
be popular. 

X. 

The same conditions are found in the separate States. 
If a Governor with skill as a manager, has ambitions or 
interests, he may make a legislature his tool more effectu- 
ally than if he were a Czar or a South American dictator. 
If he is honest and independent, he may use the same 
power for purposes which, to him and even to others, seem 
honest and right. The student will emphasize the exist- 
ence and scope of this power rather than the use to which 
it is put. He will be prone to inquire whether our boasted 
system of checks and balances has not broken down, when 
one man, by the accident of place, can add legislative 
authority to that of the executive. 

In addition to executive pressure, the legislature, both 
Federal and State, is prone to yield to popular demands 
and to pass laws and regulations known to be dangerous in 
principle and ruinous in practice. The conservative 
elements of society — which must both reign and govern, 
because in the end only they stop to think — take alarm 
and the executive is besought to intervene. That he may 
do this effectively he has had conferred upon him the veto, 
with which, to the relief, in most cases, of legislative 
leaders themselves, he is able to save them from their own 
fatuity. Power, thus invoked and used, is like saving a 
fool from his folly or a desperate man from suicide. 

Probably no outward sign of the concentration of 
power is more important than that furnished by the con- 
trol of legislative bodies. In the beginning, the rules of 
procedure were so simple that the manual, compiled by 
Jefferson for the Senate, was long the universal guide in 
every order of public meeting — as indeed it still is in a 



18 

modified form. It was plain, easy of understanding and 
interpretation, and fitted into the ideas behind our 
society. 

As the flood of proposed laws increased in volume — 
while the need for them was sensibly diminished — anotlier 
dyke was erected against popular control. Long before the 
adoption of certain drastic rules of the House of Represen- 
tatives led the Speaker of the day to thank God that it was 
no longer a deliberative body, the methods of procedure 
had become complicated and difficult and now they are a 
maze. They are almost as obscure as if written in Choc- 
taw, while the officers supposed to be the servants of these 
bodies have long since become their masters In like 
manner, appointed by the Speaker, the legislative com- 
mittee — no longer open and democratic, but based upon 
party position and length of service, and hampered by 
conditions foreign to our original conceptions — concen- 
trates in itself a power which would never have been 
granted when individual initiative was still strong. 

Thus, by encroachment from the executive and the 
operation of its own rules, the legislature has tended to 
become more and more impotent. In addition to these, 
recognizing, as if by instinct, its own weakness, it has 
surrendered a still larger share of its power. As Presidents 
and Governors could not do the necessary work efficienth'-, 
and Mayors could not be trusted with it, authority has 
gradually been lodged in commissions. The public over- 
sight of Railroads, Canals, Insurance, Coal Mining, Fish- 
eries, Forests, Reservations, Parks, Water, Gas and Electric 
Lighting, and Traction — in their present form mainly new 
developments — was given to special bodies. The legis- 
lature, while giving up something it really could not 
retain, thought that it would weaken the executive if direct 
control of these industries was given into other hands. 



19 

As a result, perhaps three-fourths of the rehitions 
which the people hold to corporations, municipal and busi- 
ness, are now in the hands of commissions and bureaus. 
In the majority of cases, the work is done by incompetent 
or inexperienced men and is, therefore, badly done. There 
is continual interference with that freedom of internal 
trade and commerce of which we have always boasted our- 
selves ; there is the use of these bodies, for personal or 
party purposes ; while the executive, instead of being 
weakened, has been strengthened, by exercise of the power 
of appointment and removal. But the most illuminating 
feature of these intervening bodies is that they have been 
fashioned for the avowed purpose of avoiding or averting 
popular control ; a tendency which has commanded 
general acceptance. Their history illustrates the trend 
towards a central power, verging upon the absolute, retir- 
ing so-called democratic government further into the 
background and promoting the growth of that bureaucracy 
continually held up to reproach when dealing with the 
systems of other countries. 

In nothing has concentration gone farther than in our 
courts. Taking a long step beyond England and the pre- 
cedents inherited from her, they can and do make the 
legislature ridiculous and the executive impotent. This is 
the case, too, while they have no separate power even to 
execute their own writs. They go on fixing the law — with 
almost universal popular acceptance, whether it involves 
the conviction or acquittal of a criminal or the settlement 
of a great constitutional issue. If they decide that this or 
that is not permissible under the law — even when no statute 
can or ought to regulate it, as in the Northern Securities and 
other Corporation cases — some way out is generally found. 
Their decisions strengthen authority somewhere and, as its 
incidence is uncertain, they naturally attract opposition 



20 

from demagogues out of office — who see in them bars to the 
attainment of power, or from those in office who feel or fear 
the restraining hand. 

XL 

Another ingredient in this tendenc}' is catching tlie 
public ear. Time was when the holder of an office 
attracted attention only because he had something to say. 
Whether he was President, Governor, Senator, .Judge or 
Constable, he had the hearing that his utterance warranted 
and no more. An office had little drawing power apart 
from its holder's ideas. 

Now, lie makes his appeal with the enlarged authority 
of his office. He may be a demagogue, with no higher 
message than the commonplaces of his class from Cleon 
downward ; still, he may count upon a hearing or a cult, 
and command popularity and power. If these are imper- 
ill(pd or lost, the multitude will almost certainly be fed on 
husks by successors of the same stamp. When public 
interest or absence of effective leadership supervene, an 
agitator may also get a temporary hearing — coining dis- 
content into dollars or using it for notoriety ; his face may 
disfigure the fences or hoardings ; or he may bo nominated 
for high office, however little prospect he may have of 
election, thus supplementing the official or even competing 
with him. Both illustrate the tendency to focus attention 
upon those in public i)lace — just as a King, or a reigning 
Duke, or a retired Prime Minister, may do. 

They emphasize the fact, too, that we must reckon 
with the spirit, if not with the body, of destructiveness. 
They reveal men of long American ancestry, presumably 
educated and patriotic, yet standing ready to lead the 
ignorant or dissolute into excess, from no other desire than 
to serve their own ends. Have we not a right to condemn 



21 

the official or orator whose daily output of oratorical froth, 
bringing the coveted reward in notoriety, inflicts cruel and 
unusual punishments upon the society foolish enough to 
listen or to heed? 

XII. 

There is a fungous political growth known in the 
parlance of the day as bossism — something which no 
man, however wise or experienced, could explain to an 
intelligent foreigner. Its distribution is so wide and gen- 
eral, and its meaning so well understood by our people, that 
definition is unnecessary. Wherever found, the boss shuns 
direct responsibility. If he accepts office, it is a modest 
one. He cares nothing for the semblance of power — its 
reality is good enough for him. Salaries and allowances 
are little to his taste — he prefers to keep the toll-gates 
through which the tax-payer must pass. Education may 
have its uses for others — he will not need it, except to dis- 
train upon its revenues or to control its patronage. 

So universal is this parasite, that, in some stage of 
development, it is found, in both parties, in every State, 
county and municipality, the country over. Nor does 
the boss plough a lonely furrow, as there are rivals always 
willing to take his place. He dominates local initiative, as 
liis special quarry, but invites and welcomes other activi- 
ties. He supports some candidate for President ; degrades 
one tool from the Senate to substitute another more sub- 
.servient ; makes a Governor his puppet or, occasionally, in 
the absence of the right man, takes the place himself; so 
chooses sheriffs as to foment or suppress mob violence ; 
controls legislatures, city councils, or county commissions ; 
and stands before the doorways of utilities, railroads, or 
corporations needing favors and ready to pay for them. 
Once a jest, he has become an institution and a men- 



22 

ace ; once weak and local, satisfied with petty tribute, 
the class is now all-pervading and united in a community 
of interest than which nothing can be stronger. 

Behind this new force is the party machine with its 
infinite ramifications, from the hamlet or election district, 
through township, city, county and State, up to the all- 
comprehending national convention. Taken together, they 
constitute the most efficient instrument ever fashioned for 
enabling the few to rule the many. Over a series of years, 
in the whole country, certainly not more than one out 
of a hundred voters either attends a party caucus or con- 
vention or has any part in creating or curbing a power 
almost autocratic. In its proudest days, despotism in 
Rome or France never knew such a perfect device for pro- 
moting its aims and ends. 

It is no part of my i)urpose to analyze this force. For 
seven hundred years the English race has been exaggerat- 
ing political action, giving it a place far beyond its deserts 
or its relation to the aggregate of human effort. The effect 
has been so to circumscribe political power to two bodies, 
called parties, as to make its generation elsewhere difficult 
or impossible. Open to no rivalry, they appeal equally to 
the same interests and classes. Each represents, now, the 
best impulses, again the worst, generally a lofty indifference 
which makes them the prey of the designing and the selfish. 

XIIL 

To deal with combination in business is to touch the 
most absorbing question of the day. When the interven- 
tion of government and politicians is deemed the most 
vital matter in business there is little hope that its import- 
ance will be understood. Ordered industry may be defined 
as the barometer of human progress ; but it is not 
necessary to treat the question anew, from the point of 



23 

view of economics : because of this there has ah^eady been 
so much, that the world is tired of it ; nor need we review 
its evolution and long history : the elements of these are 
well understood 

We talk glibly of Trusts, without attempting a defin- 
ition of the word: so none has been framed which describes 
the thing itself. When the use and control — not, of 
necessity, the ownership, of vast wealth — have passed into 
a few hands, we see the perfect working of concentration. 
We may not understand the logic of the movement, nor 
its effect upon inherited conditions. We know, neverthe- 
less, that it is not the rasult of accident — the product of 
wild chance. 

In order to comprehend its philosophy, we must go 
back to the time when hand labor and apprenticeship were 
univereal ; when commerce was small and penetrated only 
into narrow areas ; when exchange and banking were, 
relatively, in their infancy ; when food and goods were 
produced and consumed almost wholly within the limits of 
each community ; when the standard of living, for all 
engaged in industrial occupations, was simple ; when mas- 
ters and men were closely associated in person and interest; 
and when transportation had scarcely passed beyond the 
stage of development reached by the Phoenecians. These 
conditions persisted, with little change, for twenty or thirty 
centuries of high civilization. During all this time, the 
simplest of machines sufficed for men's needs — being then 
no more than auxiliaries to the hand. But gradually mech- 
anical devices were brought to such perfection that — 
although we still call the result manufactures — the 
machine has become vital and necessary with the hand as 
its helper, — often little more tlian its watcher. 

When invention and discovery spread by leaps and 
bounds and the resulting devices were successfully 



24 

applied to human needs, three effects followed : — (1) 
they superseded the old-time master ; (2) they killed 
apprenticeship by making unnecessary the skilled worker ; 
and (3) they so increased and cheapened products as to 
multiply the demand. 

On the master's side, the necessity for capital followed. 
This could only come from association. Gradually, the 
profits, spared and withdrawn from agriculture and com- 
merce, were invested in machinery. As one development 
followed another, the power of money was changed, 
demand grew, and with it came supply. Competition 
made or found new markets for the products turned out by 
the machine. On the side of the workman, whose outlook 
upon the world w^as wholly changed, almost in the twink- 
ling of an eye, it was accompanied by violence. This 
failed, as always, but labor again caught its breath, and 
organized trades unions, in defiance of the laws of con- 
spiracy soon to become a dead letter. 

With these developments, the centripetal forces in in- 
dustry were fairly at work. The rest of the story is that of 
the boy's snowball. New continents and islands have been 
discovered, subdued and populated. New seas have been 
opened so that the ocean steamer disputes with the railroad 
the honor of being the last word in the evolution of the 
mechanical. The needs of the world could only be met by 
this use of co-operation in its perfect form — that of the cor- 
poration — because, only by means of it could capital 
command management and profit. From one corporation 
to many — competing with each other with the same 
machines, employing the same kind of labor, making the 
same products, seeking the same markets — it was only a 
short step to the small, tentative combination. Taking a 
still shorter step, and we had the corporation of corpor- 
ations : the so-called Trust. 



25 

At each step an owner, unable to adjust himself to 
new conditions, was eliminated. Here a superintendent or 
engineer, there a foreman or workman, for whom the game 
was too large, or the pace too rapid, fell out of the ranks. 
During this time, progress had substituted the science of 
the precisian for the primitive rule of thumb, so that larger 
leadership became a recognized necessity. It then becomes 
easy to understand that in industry, as in a nation's army 
— expanding from company to battalion, from battalion to 
brigade, from brigade to corps, — officer after officer drops 
out, while soldiers or groups of them are replaced, one after 
another, because they can no longer fit into the new 
environment. 

We have adjusted to these changes a new country, 
forced at short notice, to feed a great multitude pressing in- 
to it from the outside, and an infinitely larger and increas- 
ing multitude — which no man can number — to whom, in 
the expanding markets of the world, it must send food and 
the raw material of clothing and shelter. Thus the necessity 
for combination became clear. Nor does the appearance of 
the great industrial commander have any longer the char- 
acter of mystery. Bearing in mind these things it will be 
clear why he had to dispose his army to advantage, and 
the fact that he has done so is attested by a varied com- 
merce, widely distributed, the extension of railroads, the 
growth of cities and a busy population, — but for him, non- 
existent, petty or simple. 

This capacity for large affairs — first shown in our 
trade with both Europe and Asia — has not been confined 
either to its original seats, or to a few financial centres, old 
or new. There is scarcely a State or a considerable city 
which has not brought opportunity to men who have been 
able to conceive, organize, and conduct enterprises of pith 
and moment. Banks with a hundred score of corres- 



26 

pondents distributed over wide areas, are found a thousand 
miles from the seaboard ; single institutions, receiving and 
investing the savings of from fifty thousand to a hundred 
thousand depositors, are not uncommon ; life insurance 
companies, marvels of concentration and confidence, have 
grown up ; and building associations, encouraging and 
developing the home-owning instinct, are almost universal. 
All these — really great trusts in the proper sense of this 
word — testify to successful fruitage by the once feeble plant 
of co-operation. They reveal the possibilities inherent in 
vast material resources when controlled by natural leaders, 
w^ho, informed by knowledge, are able thus to supplement 
the efforts of an industrious and enterprising people. 

As the result of the changes arising out of this rapid 
and steady growth, never, in all the world's history, has so 
much talent, character, energy or honesty, been at the ser- 
vice of industry as during the past hundred years. Recog- 
nizing the necessity for supplying the pressing needs of the 
world, political ambitions — hitherto the most dominating 
and potential in moving men — have been put aside. 
Leaders of the highest ability and merit have thus left 
government weakened and given it over, in the main, to 
an order of men distinctly inferior. In like manner, the 
learned professions have been driven from their usual 
recruiting grounds, while literature no longer attracts the 
most powerful minds. 

XIV. 

It has been equally impossible to escape the influence 
of this tendency upon religious thought and activity. Those 
bodies which have always enforced discipline, have gone 
still farther in this direction. Whether in new lands or in 
old, the Roman Catholic Church — the greatest voluntary 
body known to history — has never surrendered or weak- 
ened its authoritj'. 



27 

In like manner, the English Church, and its branches, 
always a great central body, looking back over long vistas 
of history, has kept itself fairly free from the dominating 
centrifugal forces and is now ready to enter upon its herit- 
age. 

The sects which have grown directly out of the work 
and teachings of Wesley, adopted a modified episcopal 
form of government, so that they have been in a position 
to adjust themselves, when the time came, to the changes 
in tendency and purpose. 

The Congregationalists — lineal successors of those 
assertive individualists, the Independents — have associated 
themselves and tend to recur, often unconsciously, to the 
original rigidity and discipline of Presbyterianism. The 
Baptists, constitutionally lacking in discipline, would fain 
come together for a better common understanding. When 
these two great sects, like those more compactly organized 
or severely trained, are moved to take on corporate form 
and to institute heresy trials, the trend of their thought is 
plain. 

The newer and smaller sects — some or them revivals 
of early tendencies or so-called heresies — and others, little 
more than personal offshoots from bodies themselves off- 
shoots, either do not grow or tend to readjust themselves to 
the parent bodies, or return to a form of belief with 
history and tradition behind it. Each sect thus obeys, 
the impulse to create or strengthen authority. 

Over all, are found aspirations for union ; common 
activities along many lines ; the practical disappearance of 
purely sectarian dogmas ; the attractions of liturgy and an 
ordered service : the return, not avowed, but still general, 
to stained glass windows and Gothic architecture ; the 
desire to conserve and use what seience and knowledge 
have left to religion ; the dominance of organization, rather 



28 

than of the man — all emphasizing authority. They show 
that to be effective as well as recognized, the leadership 
demanded by the times must come through concentra- 
tion of effort, not its diffusion. 

XV. 

In education, we have given ourselves over to consoli- 
dation. Everywhere, between the encircling shores of the 
Atlantic and the Pacific, we have so persisted in this ten- 
dency that the same books are taught, by teachers trained 
in the same way, to the same kinds of pupils, to the 
destruction or hurt of originality. However widely sun- 
dered, our methods so fit into each other, that character in 
superintendent, teacher or pupil, has become next to im- 
possible, — unless and until the rigidity of school education 
has been overcome in the struggle of actual life. When 
the State interfered to make conditions, then to supervise, 
and later to levy, or to dictate the amount of school taxes, 
the day of local initiative was over. The central graded 
township school was a natural and helpful step. Even the 
Federal Government has given money or lands, naturally 
followed by advice and a certain direction. 

Taken together, we have been able to attain, over 
three million square miles of the earth's surface, that awful 
uniformity under which every child in a given grade, 
within the limits of each separate time zone, is reciting the 
same lesson at the same moment. Tliis result so strikes 
the imagination that we are now attempting — let it be 
hoped vainly — to extend the same deadening monotony 
into those islands of the sea which illustrate the operation 
of concentric influences and add new weight to our 
burdens. 

A college was once defined as a log with Mark Hopkins 
on one end and a student on the other. Now, we cannot 



29 

so much as project a small college of the old type. 
Thinking in terms of millions, we look about for their pos- 
sessors only to make the resulting institution an imitation 
of the oldest and largest, or a glorified high school where, 
in accordance with Dr. .Johnson's formula, every one finds 
something to eat but no one gets a full meal. 

XVL 

Even in what is known as fashionable society, we see 
the influence of combination. It is already organized and 
its various parts are so attracted to each other that the time 
is, perhaps, not remote when the Four Hundreds of many 
cities will, like other federated bodies, hold national con- 
ventions for fixing rules to regulate admission and to frame 
constitutions and by-laws which shall have universal 
acceptance. 

Among men, mental tedium or vacuity has produced 
many curious secret organizations — now taken seriously by 
vast numbers — than which nothing could better illustrate 
the dominating influence of association. Among women, 
an abnormal industrial ambition united with an exagger- 
ated demand for rights and a resulting itxilure to recognize 
duties, drives them into societies of a dismal type. From 
this chaos, come noisy demands for participation in a suff"- 
rage already discredited ; clubs, in which pretension 
triumphs over knowledge, while vanity displaces pride ; 
and movements, social or political, which, labeled moral or 
philanthropic, invite danger by their disregard of experi- 
ence and nature's limitations. 

Instead of desire or ability to participate in games, 
the tendency seems to be for crowds to collect in order to 
see them — ^just as the Greeks had their spectacles, or the 
Caesars threw gladiators or Christians to the lions. The 
skill, personality, and fortunes of a few hired players 



30 

absorb the attention of millions who never see them or the 
games in which they appear. 

Reports of murder trials of tlie lowest and most vulgar 
sort are spread broadcast throughout every part of a great 
country boasung itself of education and intelligence, in 
order that, at nightfall, the fifty millions of persons who 
have learned to read, may know them in all their loath- 
some and demoralizing details. A social scandal, involv- 
ing a man of position, is repeated each week by twenty 
thousand newspapers until succeeded by another or viler 
sensation. To assert that this condition is due to the yel- 
low newspaper is to confuse cause with effect. It comes 
from vicious tastes which demand satisfaction and it will 
continue until the hypnotic stage has passed. 

XVII. 

Nor can we overlook the congestion of population in 
cities. Whether its effects are good or bad, the process 
marks changes no less striking, in their way, than those 
alread}^ dealt with. In the main, this movement brings 
together a class — collected from the most squalid life known 
to Europe — never subjected to the peculiar discipline 
incident to cities. For the most part, they show little of 
spirit and less of ambition. Whether the ruling motive is 
dread of military service, hope of work, or escape from 
oppression and bad government, they seldom have even the 
slight industrial skill now demanded. They are massed in 
special quarters of their own — uniformly slums — and 
herded in tenements. From the beginning, their struggle 
is both sordid and pathetic. Now sweated and their votes 
sold at wholesale, again bound for a time to hard task- 
masters, generally without personal independence, the des- 
pair of the really strong and unselfish men among their 
compatriots, they illustrate, at its weakest and most dan- 
gerous point, the tendency to combination. 



31 

The movement from country to town and from both 
to the city, emphasizes the same tendency in another form. 
The isolation of early days accorded with the qualities of a 
reliant and self-sufficient yeomanry who took their pleas- 
ures as sadly as did their ancestors centuries before. 
Diligent and confident in the conduct of their own busi- 
ness, help from lawyer or banker was not needed. As 
their prosperity grew, games and amusements became the 
necessary incidents of company and fellowship. New 
methods in education, new social conditions and rules, 
travel for business or pleasure, took them out of the rut, 
w^ith the result that our county towns and scattered ham- 
lets, small and meagre originally, have developed into 
centres and become far-off imitations of the capitol or the 
metropolis. 

Their inhabitants no longer disdain assistance from 
the banker and the lawyer. Indeed, initiative or success- 
ful management on the lines fixed by the grandfathers or 
fathers, who laid the foundations of these comfortable for- 
tunes, seldom lies within their power. Most of the really 
ambitious must push out into the great world. In no 
other country than ours, can there be found so many 
persons in whom a small competence, instead of arousing 
ambition and increasing efficiency, 'SO promotes business 
timidity, destroys initiative, or lures to ruin. As they 
need a manager, the supply comes. In one farming 
county, within my own knowledge, a single lawyer, one of 
sixty, directs, like the manager of some large venture, the 
relations to debtors and creditors, collects old investments 
or make new ones, for a hundred families of this type. 

As an illustration of concentration, this movement is 
scarcely less typical or striking than the making or man- 
agement of the United States Steel Corporation. In the 
aggregate, it affects far larger amounts of capital as well as 



32 

more persons and transactions. The question may well be 
asked whether these classes, the dependents of the lawyer 
or the banker or both, ever think of themselves when they 
read, with horror, of the making of a new Trust or the 
workings of one already established ! 

XVIII. 

I have thus glanced at some features of our national 
life at two periods. In the one, we see a people, as thor- 
oughly assimilated a^ any in the world, united in ideals 
and spirit, in whom character stood out, without loss of 
the early dav-dreams or acquisition of the latter-day aspir- 
ations to world power. 

It was not then thought necessary to govern men — 
they were counted as little worth having unless fitted to 
govern themselves. One State was not prone to follow 
another into the wildest orgies of legislation — merely for 
the sake of making laws. Our demagogues were still con- 
fined within their own water-tight compartments, and, as 
their field was limited, their trade had not become one of 
skill and profit. Our original dialects had not been ironed 
into a uniformity reached only by the progressive degrad- 
ation of our language. The possession of a distinct charac- 
ter was not looked upon as an eccentricity. If we had a 
great national figure there was some assurance that he had 
not been preferred mainly because his horizon was that of 
a county or a township. If we had small men, we meas- 
ured them by our foot-rule not theirs. If it was necessary 
to get rid of the rats, however predatory or numerous, there 
was still an aversion to burning or sinking the ship. Best 
of all, if a problem presented itself, it was not merely 
talked about, but was solved, even if a long and desolating 
civil war became necessar3^ 

It may be interesting, by way of contrast, to note some 
recent changes in our population. Since 1870, we have 



33 

admitted as immigrants, from the countries of Europe and 
North America, nearly twenty millions of people. With 
their descendants and survivors, this means that, out of 
seventy-five million whites, one-half have no American 
knowledge, ancestry or traditions older than the period of 
the Franco-Prussian war. And yet, physiologists tell us 
that, in our early days, when immigration was still fairly 
homogenous, it required at least a hundred years to make 
Europeans into Americans, that is, to assimilate their bodies 
to a strange air, new foods, new industrial conditions, and 
the various constituents that entered into account. How- 
much time may be needed, with these new, strange elements, 
in order to adjust anew the focus of their minds, to give a 
broad, comprehensive patriotism, to impress our economic 
point of view, or to produce emulation of our pride and 
independence, has not been estimated by a friendly prying 
ethnologist. 

We admit these people, however low in the scale, with 
the welcome due to humanity. They come to the unfam- 
iliar boons of safety, regular industry and three meals a 
day. Although they have had no part in the making of 
the country, they are in the world, have rights, may be 
made useful to themselves and must be taught duties if the 
lesson lies within their power. 

Dismissing from account the rare individual, these 
later additions are doomed, as a class and for an indefinite 
period, to be hewers of wood and drawers of water in in- 
dustry, automatic danger signals in politics, and almost the 
despair of moral and religious effort. We must, therefore, 
concern ourselves with the awful impotence, the dangers 
inseparable from ignorant, undisciplined masses who must 
be ruled by the strong hand. We must deal with numbers 
to whom opportunity means nothing because they cannot 
embrace it — men who may idly indulge aspiration while 



34 

ambition waits vainly for them to knoclc at her doors. 

Whether we wish it or not, in accepting these new 
peoples, we must adopt ideas and methods strange to our 
ancestors and predecessors. Unconsciously, our ideals have 
changed, not because we have rejected them, but for the 
vital reason that, with the materials at our disposal, we can 
no longer hope to realize them. In society, no more than 
in textiles, is it possible to make a silk purse out of a sow's 
ear. Instead of a people, once homogenous, with likeness 
in origin, tastes and outlook, we see a population, quick 
indeed, mercurial even to the danger-point, impulsive 
rather than emotional, unsettled and confused in type, 
and in a state of transition — whether physical, mental, 
institutional, moral or religious. 

XIX. 

We have not developed' this tendency because of 
aggression by any man, or class, or interest. The reason is 
far better and stronger ; we have been driven to it, and so 
a different order of leadership must be sought, created and 
welcomed. Discipline must be invoked from a central 
authority — it can no longer be generated wholly within the 
local community, important as this must always remain. 
Whether or not we believe in it, whether we welcome it or 
reject it, the change of conditions makes it a necessit3\ 

Nor can our needs be met by the rise of benevolent 
despots, those rare beings who assume or assert the posses- 
sion of oraniscence. Our new leaders may not be states- 
men : the chances are that they will not be. The 
important problems will be economic. When the time 
comes, as Macaulay predicted, that one-half of the pop- 
ulation of New York has had no breakfast and has no 
prospect of a dinner, our successors may not follow the 
example we are now inclined to set by refusing a welcome 
to the industrial or commercial master who can help in 



35 

time of need. It will then become clear why government 
has so suffered in character as to be relegated to a place of 
minor importance. In its pure state, socialism is an 
attractive theory, but the shadow on the dial of its future is 
cast by the assured contest for leadership, during which it 
would degenerate into wild anarchy. 

Although bossism exhibits anew the spectacle of the 
blind leading the blind: it is not an accident. It reflects 
the need for leadership ; it is an attempt to escape from that 
dullness inseparable from the commonplace. It is not 
encouraging to know that, in avoiding the boss, our people 
either run into the open arms of the demagogue, or those of 
the executive who may use his place to appeal to passion, 
to work injury to thrift and property, or to dictate his own 
successor. These are the remedies provided by the old 
choice between the frying-pan and the fire. 

XX. 

Nor is the coming leader pointed out by any known 
process. A few months before his death, the late Frederick 
Temple — a really great Archbishop of Canterbury — when 
discussing the English questions of the day, asked in his 
blunt way : " But, if you could call any living statesman 
to power, whom would you name?-" Propounded any- 
where in the world, this question would defy answer. As 
society must adjust itself to the methods necessary for 
creating and enforcing discipline, so we may assure our- 
selves of its accomplishment when the time comes. Weak- 
ness of initiative, so promoted by machinery, the 
encouragement of artificial methods for repressing leadership, 
and the success of popular crazes, would produce serious con- 
sequences. 

It is doubtful, whether in the face of all efforts to 
promote training, education, industry and independence, a lar- 
ger proportion of mature male persons is engaged in produc- 



36 

tive labor now, than a century ago. Estimate is next 
to impossible of the hordes who prey upon society, as its 
criminals, and vagabonds, while the weight of the burden 
it carries in the insane, defective, ne'er-do-well, lazy, idle pen- 
sioner or pauper, in the small rich, made un-ambitious or in- 
competent by pettiness of fortune, or in the larger rich, 
ruined by vice or luxury, is equally beyond computation. 

Ma}' not even the entrance of women into industry, 
hailed as a good sign, be a grave portent as showing that 
men are no longer able and willing to do the world's heavy 
work ? Its influence upon the future of the race cannot 
now be foreseen, but mankind may one day realize that, of 
all the foundation stones laid by Christianity and newly 
solidified in the age of chivalry, the one thus rejected was 
the chief. 

While much has been done to adjust machinery to the 
needs of millions of human beings who are in the world as 
an effect of the increased production it has promoted, the 
work of combination has only begun. Its great triumphs 
are yet to come. If we are to escape the withering touch of 
government, we must recognize the necessity for this new- 
old force, manage it more efficiently, and complete its domi- 
nation. It is still imperfectly organized, inordinately waste- 
ful, and too often the victim of the financial quack. That 
it must assure a leadership at once intelligent and honest, 
stability in supply, reasonableness in prices and profits, con- 
tinuous and eff'ective competition in foreign markets, and 
more exacting standards for all engaged in it, are axioms. 
However organized, the business of a great people cannot 
long prosper, if, at every turn, it is to become the football 
of the ignorant, the pretender, the demagogue, or the dis- 
organizer. If this danger is to be averted and progress is 
to continue, never did a more weighty responsibilty rest 
upon men than that now cast upon our captains of industry. 

Thus far in our history, large leadership has, of neces- 



37 

sity, been drawn mainly from the descendants of the 
English, Scotch, Scotch-Irish, Dutch and Germans— the 
five strains in our original population which have long been 
so thoroughly assimilated that no cleavage can be seen. 
However, their proportion to the total population is so small, 
it shows such a constant decline, and they are so weakened 
by many hurtful influences, that they can neither expect 
nor be expected to furnish hereafter original and directing 
power sufficient to meet the needs of many times their 
number. 

The weight of the burden thrown upon the men of 
lifrht and leading among our later foreign contingents, in 
so directing as to make them useful additions to our popula- 
tion, is seldom appreciated. The magnitude and value of 
the work thus undertaken and carried on with devotion, 
cheerfulness and singleness of purpose, have seldom been 
adequately recognized by its beneficiaries or our people, and 
not always asserted even by themselves. Having thus 
served their apprenticeship, they are fairly ready to take up 
the higher duties awaiting them. Never was there a field 
in which the need for honest and effective husbandmen was 
greater. 

Sargon, king of Assyria, abandoned the capitals of his 
father and his ancestors, with their history, their tombs and 
their treasures, that he might found a new city which 
should belong to him only, where the i)asL should begin 
with his reign. So it once was with us. Yet, it has now 
become apparent that we must accept the rules of life pre- 
pared for us by generations of predecesscrs. Having found, 
as Edmund Burke said of himself, that men must show 
their passports at every turn, so we may learn that the 
world was no more created by the latest man, who with his 
tiresome, old commonplaces, sets up as the inventor of a 
political theory, than by the woman who launches a new- 
religion. 



38 

Coiifi<]ent and optimistic i)ersons continually forget 
that human society is a great continuing limited lia- 
bility company. Tiie bonds are held firmly by sleeping 
partners, being the majority of the living, who, content 
with a small, certain return, have neither ability nor 
desire to conduct the business. The common stock is held 
by the men who, doing the work and bestirring themselves 
to increase the product, assume responsibilities and take 
risks, thereb}" both earning and commanding a better return 
than the idle, the indifferent, or the satisfied. The pre- 
ferred stock is reserved for the dead, who started the 
business, carried it on according to their lights, left it a 
going concern, contributed labor and character, and, with 
these, bequeathed their example. So, when human experi- 
ence isal)andoned or forgotten, that moment the people still 
on earth must pay the penalty, in loss of credit, for man- 
kind has then defaulted upon the dividend to the dead. 

XXII. 

In so far as this tendency is political there are few 
signs of its perversion or the shifting of its incidence. It is 
mainly an accretion of new powers, invoked and then 
lodged somewhere. In our early days, not being needed, 
they were not used, humanity proceeding, as in common 
with it, along tlie lines of least resistance. The feebleness 
of the Federal Government was due to the fact that there 
was little for it to do ; and the functions of the States were 
simple because the people, thoroughly understanding each 
other, did for themselves what was to be done. But, as 
population changed in character and increased in numbers, 
it was found to be unamenable to discipline of so mild an 
order. Even then, the different centres of authority did 
not clash upon the exercise of this, that, or the other 
power. Like individuals, in similar situations, each did 
what la}^ at hand. If a dispute arose, the courts, standing 



39 

over all, commanding public approval and support, inter- 
posed with those Shall Nots — always so effective in regulat- 
ing both peoples and individuals. 

While, therefore, the people of a great State once 
entrusted their lives and property to local authority, the 
pillars of the popular temple have not been pulled down 
because, under new^ conditions, with new kinds of popula- 
tion to govern, with new forms of property to protect, tliey 
devise for themselves a State police body, uniformed, 
trained, and disciplined — thereby setting an example 
certain to find general imitation. 

In, the past, designing men, employing armed forces as 
instruments of their wills — fertile sources of power — have 
maintained personal rule for a time. Under their sway 
the State — though neither initiating nor creating — has 
become the dominant force. If, instead of repeating the 
dismal failures of its earlier history, democracy has 
achieved any success in later days, it h.^s done so in just 
the measure that it has found and substituted masterful, 
intelligent leadership for the impulses of the dreamer, or 
the hesitation and inertia of the mob. If appeal is made 
anew to this quality, the present tendency will bring an 
accession of strength to the people and not to some personal 
tyranny: the most futile and fleeting»of all forms of powei'. 

P^rom the beginning, each generation or age has 
aspired, struggled and achieved. Occasionally a sttigo is 
reached when, vaunting itself upon its contributions, it 
fondly thinks that it has added the word. Finis, to the 
annals of progress. Just as its pride seems overmastering, 
there comes a moment of quiet, when it stops, takes 
thought, and, looking about it, puts a measuring line upon 
its addition to the stock of ideas and action. Seeing how 
small this is, for a time it loses its conceit, regains its good 
sense, recalls its obligations, and again reverences the past. 

As a people, we may well repeat this process. 



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